European Custom Installer

System Integration for the Connected Home

Blu-Ray: Plenty of Thunder & Lightning, No Rainmaker

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by Bob Snyder

Warner Bros. will back Sony's format for storing high def movies and this gave the Blu-Ray camp the urge to declare their rivals HD DVD were “beaten.”

“We’ve heard that before,” insisted executives from HD DVD. But it was scary when the HD-DVD group cancelled their own CES press conference because it followed too close after the Warner Bros. announcement.

If Blu-Ray wins (or HD DVD, for that matter), the question will not be whether or not one group or another had another more thunder or lightning. The real question is whether either camp could ever be a Rainmaker.

With Apple, Amazon, NetFlix, Cisco, Microsoft and others push downloadable content, with cable and phone companies flogging on-demand, all day/all night HD, and with I.T. companies pushing on-line storage and new form factors, the DVD business is looking as promising as the last Dodo bird.

JVC, for one example, showed a flat-screenTV at CES that allows users to simply insert an iPod to watch video content. So any slim media player can become an alternative to digital video discs. And Denon, for another example, is building iPod docks into its AVRs like Altec, third example, is doing for loudspeakers.

IPTV, in fact, was the dominant theme of CES. Sharp, Samsung, and Panasonic all entered content alliances that will let consumers look at headlines or videos from the net on their TVs.

Content will jump full-blown into on-line delivery. Any and every device with an IP connection will be content-ready.

Obviously there will still be customers who ask for high def DVD in their set-up. But more and more you will have to confront customers who will resist in favor of an online content solution. Customers who have already bought and re-bought their favorite music in LP, 8-track, cassette, CD, and then plain ol’DVD may be the first to resist adding any more hardware that requires re-purchasing content.  These same Blu-Ray resistant buyers may be susceptible to sales approaches that incorporate newer ways to access music/movies on line.

In the Old World, we showed households how to hook up Audio and Video in the home in order to play their recorded media. In the New World, we’ll be compelled to help them to throw away DVDs.